Make "Following" automatic.

OliverStuartLeon1

There is a big problem with anyone being able to make changes to families without having to check with, or notifying the original submitter. I have recently had to sort out an entire family where children had been deleted, parents changed, etc. This is not the first time this has happened.

There should, at least, be something in the system that automatically sends messages of these changes back to those responsible for the families in the first place.

I would have thought that “Following” should be automatic, not have to think about checking “Follow”. Too many of these changes are being made without those who added the info being warned. After all, there are many like me who have been adding names since FS started, so cannot go checking on the thousands of names I have added over all those years.

Could you please look at changing it so that “Following” is the automatic setting. That way, we have more chance of picking up on messed up changes quickly. 

Regards,

Stuart Oliver 

genthusiast

I do agree that direct ancestors or profiles that you directly contribute to - could/should at a minimum be followed automatically. However, like most things in Family Tree - FamilySearch requires that you set/add such settings. For those lines with brick walls quite close - this is not too big of a task - but for lines extending further back the task can become a little more difficult.

I like the Landscape pedigree or Fan Chart views to double check the status - click on their name and in the person card select the 'Follow' star icon.

Paul W

@OliverStuartLeon1

We have been advised many times in the past that the there is a limit of 4,000 individuals who we can add to our Following list. This is why we have to be selective about who we add to it. If Following was an automatic setting (after we had carried out work on IDs), many of us would soon find ourselves up to the limited number and would have to start deleting individuals from our list in order to allow for more / "new" IDs to be added.

Until the FamilySearch engineers can find a way of extending the 4,000 maximum (which we have been told could cause problems to the functioning of Family Tree - though don't ask me to explain why!) we have to choose the individuals to be added manually - and carefully.

Annette Morgan

I love the way the tree works, and I disagree with the idea of having to check with other submitters before making changes. The option to follow is already available and it works well.

Adrian Bruce1

"If Following was an automatic setting (after we had carried out work on IDs), many of us would soon find ourselves up to the limited number and would have to start deleting individuals from our list in order to allow for more / "new" IDs to be added."

Which would be a pain in the posterior, trying to decide which followings to delete.

However, a typical item says things like "1 Person Following; 2 Past Contributors". I would suggest that it might be possible to generate notifications to the Past Contributors (who aren't already Followers) to that profile if something changes. Just a single, one-off notification that doesn't involve a permanent entry in the Followship files and is deleted after - err - something. There's probably lots of holes in that idea for anyone who understands the architecture but it might give an alternative method.